Monthly Archives: June 2008

To Speak, To Dream

Thumbnail: Infinity candle holder

It’s on nights like this that I feel espe­cial­ly lone­ly.

I spent the last two hours look­ing for an image that would express my mood, but this was the best I could come up with. When I went out­side, to see if the street lights would offer me more, I passed by open win­dows, each one filled with a dif­fer­ent coloured light. It made me won­der what the peo­ple were doing, who they were with, what mood they were in.

It’s been a day alone. A day with­out con­tact. A day of rain and grey­ness, and liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly at Robson Arms.

So here I sit in the dark, with my apple and hon­ey swirl pie and Ovaltine, writ­ing because I haven’t said enough today, list­ing to songs of love and hate. Feeling like an old soul.

Wondering tonight if I’ll dream, or sleep sound­ly, or dream with­out remem­ber­ing.

She Treads Softly

Had I the heav­ens’ embroi­dered cloths,
Enwrought with gold­en and sil­ver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread soft­ly because you tread on my dreams.

—He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats

She knows how much I’ve fall­en for her.

And by giv­ing her my heart in such a way, she’s shar­ing the bur­den. The last thing she wants to do is hurt me, and she thinks her­self self­ish for want­i­ng to be held just so. But I know what I’m get­ting into. I know the risks.

So I told her not to hold any­thing back, because there’s noth­ing she can do, no bound­aries we can define, to make me love her any less.

There’s no point in deny­ing our­selves the joy of what we have now. To be lying next to each oth­er when we talk into the ear­ly hours of the day, bod­ies pressed against one anoth­er while the morn­ing light wash­es over us, is worth any chance at being hurt. We can deal with the inevitable lat­er.

So she treads soft­ly, on me and my heart.

And rests her head on my chest when I hold her.

Home Free

Thumbnail: Darren outside
Thumbnail: Tazo Berryblossom white tea
Thumbnail: Sausages, egg, and toast
Thumbnail: Dexter
Thumbnail: Bubble tea parlour
Thumbnail: Bubble tea
Thumbnail: Cigars
Thumbnail: Korean soup
Thumbnail: Dexter the cat in window
Thumbnail: Mall people
Thumbnail: Tempura roll
Thumbnail: Teriyaki beef
Thumbnail: Sliced orange
 

I left when the sun was set­ting. Along the way, the road stretched out infi­nite­ly before me, as if to say that I can always get away, and there is always more to go. The tree line danced and waved across the hori­zon, even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing with the sun. Then the lines of red and white in each direc­tion guid­ed me all the way to Darren’s house.

In it are lit­tle things from the house I grew up in — some can­dles here, some cab­i­nets there — that my par­ents did­n’t want after the divorce. So strange to see innocu­ous objects from my child­hood in a dif­fer­ent set­ting.

It was the first time we’ve been com­plete­ly sober togeth­er since we were kids. No alco­hol, no weed.

I found out a cou­ple things I would­n’t have known oth­er­wise:

  • My dad start­ed dat­ing some­one. He is cur­rent­ly sin­gle again.
  • He has a dance floor at his house and a nice car. This is typ­i­cal of my dad, who loves his toys.
  • My moth­er is still inse­cure.
  • My par­ents still see each oth­er, but not alone. The cur­rent social rule among the group of par­ents, is that you can’t invite one to a par­ty with­out invit­ing the oth­er.

A week­end of sweet indul­gence, late nights, and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. No one under­stands my rela­tion­ships the way Darren does, because we both share these quixot­ic ideas about love. It was so com­fort­ing to be able to express myself on these things with­out hav­ing to explain my under­ly­ing feel­ings, as if some­one could tru­ly under­stand me, espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this cur­rent phase of my life.

It made me real­ize that home isn’t where the par­ents are, some­thing I used to believe1. It’s an idea.

A com­fort­ing place you can go to get away, where you’re com­plete­ly accept­ed for who you are.

  1. I’m not sure exact­ly when I stopped believ­ing this, but it was prob­a­bly some­where between the time my par­ents got divorced and I stopped talk­ing to my mom. [↩]

A Change of Flowers

When I left, the flow­ers on my kitchen table looked like this:

Thumbnail: Dead flowers

When I got back, to my sur­prise, they looked like this:

Thumbnail: Fresh flowers

She made the bou­quet her­self — hand-picked the flow­ers, chose the colours, even made sure it was sym­met­ri­cal, know­ing my odd habits1 — and left them there to greet me from my jour­ney home.

I nev­er ask for these things but she does them any­way.

Which is exact­ly what makes them so sig­nif­i­cant.

  1. I tend to straight­en her neck­laces, her san­dal straps, the curls of her hair, the draw-strings in her hoodie/yoga pants… [↩]

Road Trip

Two in one day…you know it’s seri­ous.

I’m dri­ving out to see Darren for the week­end. He’s five hours away, and it’ll be my first trip out of the city in the car. My car.

There’s a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion to fill­ing my trunk with odds and ends — tri­pod, san­dals, snacks — that I could­n’t have car­ried on a Greyhound bus. Got my GPS and a full tank of gas.

I had Summer Sun by Ellen ten Damme play­ing here.

I can’t wait to dri­ve with the win­dows down while the sun is set­ting along the hori­zon, Summer Sun play­ing on the stereo. To be going some­where by myself.

Free.

Killed my top rat­ed playlist at work. Even have all the songs burned to sev­er­al CDs for the trip. My head is filled with lyrics. I may also begin my audio­book of Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

I’m going through some hyper­ac­tive eupho­ria again, this con­tra­dic­to­ry feel­ing of the scary and excit­ing unknown. The best part about hang­ing out with Darren is that each of us under­stands exact­ly how the oth­er feels, even though we may not under­stand it in our­selves. Something which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant right now, even though I’m pret­ty sure I’ll be okay.

I just need to get away for a while.